Two years after announcing Windows Home Server, Microsoft has revealed plans for a new low-cost server operating system: Windows Server Foundation Edition. According to ZDNet, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told analysts during a recent conference call that the upcoming OS will come out "over the next month or two."

Apparently, Ballmer sees Windows Server Foundation Edition as something a bit like netbooks for the server world. ZDNet says the CEO explained during the conference call, "If you take a look at it, as server prices, hardware prices have come down, we don't exactly have a netbook phenomenon, but if somebody can buy a $500 server, they're a little loathe to spend $500 for the server operating system that goes with it. So we have something that's akin to netbook at the server level."